Regional bosses rising

By Swapan Dasgupta


In 1963, a year after the disastrous India-China border conflict and shortly after the all-powerful Congress suffered major reverses in parliamentary bypolls, five leaders met secretly in the dead of night at the temple town of Tirupati. The men who assembled were powerful regional bosses of the Congress: S Nijalingappa, N Sanjiva Reddy, K Kamaraj, Atulya Ghosh and Srinivas Mallayya. Those unable to attend included C B Gupta, S K Patil and Biju Patnaik. The meeting was short for there was only a one-point agenda: to decide on a successor to the ailing Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. 

In May 1964 when Nehru passed away, the regional bosses were ready. There was no real succession battle as the Syndicate - as the regional grouping came to be known - quietly manoeuvred the election of the man they had selected at Tirupati the year before: Lal Bahadur Shastri. 

Nearly five decades after that fateful Tirupati meet, there is growing speculation that 2014 will once again witness the states asserting their hold over the Centre. In 1964, regional interests had been accommodated under the protective cover of an old-style Managing Agency. By comparison, today's Congress is akin to a family enterprise with branch offices that give the impression of having seen better days. Regional interests and aspirations that were once a feature of a rambling national movement have moved on and found homes in regional parties that now control state governments. Apart from the northeast, the Congress has lost its domi-nant status in the rest of India, including in states where it nominally controls a government. 

At the turn of the century, it seemed that the BJP would step into a void created by the Cong-ress. However, its progression into a truly national party has turned out to be illusory. Hindusolidarity has proved an ephemeral binding force for disparate castes and communities. Notwithstanding its expansion into Karnataka, the BJP has also failed to transcend the High Command culture that has plagued the Congress. Where the party has made a deep dent - like in Gujarat under Narendra Modi - it has operated as a regional party. 

If there is a Tirupati-like conclave in 2012 to decide on a future government in Delhi, its participants will not be bound by the protective cover of a natio-nal party. Federal impulses in India have developed independent roots, outside the structures of the two main national parties. 

At one time, particularly after the disastrous United Front experience between 1996 and 1998, it seemed that the impulses could be accommodated within coalitions built around the nationalparties. The Natio-nal Democratic Alliance was forged at a time when the BJP was the single largest party in the Lok Sabha and was seen to be growing. Similar circums-tances propelled the emergence of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in 2004. 

After the disastrous showing of both the Congress and the BJP in the Uttar Pradesh assembly election, there is every likelihood that the sum total of seats won by the regional parties could equal, if not exceed, the tally of the principal national party, be it Congress or BJP. In 1996, the combined strength of the regional parties that made up the United Front could not exceed that of either the BJP or the Congress. 

It was this absurd arithmetic (to which was added the unwillingness of the CPM to join any government where it was not the dominant partner) that made the tenures of H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral so farcical. The Deve Gowda government, for example, was brought down on Sitaram Kesri's flight of whimsy and Gujral fell on the question of the DMK's alleged culpability in the murder of Rajiv Gandhi seven years before. 

The lesson that India drew from the UF experiment was that for coalitions to endure, there has to be a national party to lead it and provide it cohesiveness. Consequently, both Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh have lasted their full terms. 

Could 2014 witness this arrangement turned upside down? In short, could India face a situation whereby the prime minister of any future coalition government is decided, not by a national party, but by a committee in which the regional parties together have a greater say? 

If indeed this does happen, old allergies may disappear and new, less ideological alliances may surface. In 1998, N Chandrababu Naidu, the convener of the UF, abruptly jumped ship after the election and extended support to the NDA. And even if a national party secures its prime minister, could that person be the preferred choice of the regional parties rather than the national party itself? For both the BJP and Congress this has ominous implications. Of course, the transition to a new and, perhaps, confederal system of coalitions is premised on the assumption that voting patterns in the state elections will be replicated in a parliamentary poll. Hitherto, the national parties have invariably performed better in Lok Sabha elections and have been inclined to make the national contest a quasi-presidential race. However, with economic decision-making devolving increasingly to the states, the disjuncture in political choice between the national and the state level may not be so marked. 

The time may have indeed come for another Tirupati-style conclave of the regional bosses to prepare for a time they could decide India's next prime minister. 


Times of India, March 14, 2012

Pitfalls of arrogance

By Swapan Dasgupta

One of the pitfalls of political leadership is the inclination to hear what is convenient. Last week, there were at least two leaders who must have wished they had been less cocooned: Mayawati and Rahul Gandhi.


For the dalit icon whose victory in 2007 had been interpreted as a tectonic shift in social attitudes, the results were unexpected. Mayawati had expected a decline in her share of assembly seats but her charmed circle never countenanced the loss of more than 100 seats. Mayawati failed to see that her imperious aloofness and her indulgence of corruption had negated all her good work-improvement in law and order, spanking new roads and the rise in the state's GDP.

It was not a casteist counter-revolution that contributed to her downfall. If there was a determination on the part of floating voters who had supported her in 2007 to defeat her this time, the reasons lie in her perceived arrogance. Indian elections have repeatedly demonstrated that the key to electoral success lie in forging a social coalition of castes and communities and diluting doctrinaire beliefs. Mayawati once held the potential of forging a dalit-led social coalition. Her style of governance added to dalit self-confidence but it alienated other communities. They combined against her and neutralised the impact of a stupendous dalit mobilisation.

The BSP combined the attributes of a social movement and a political party. Kanshi Ram's vision had envisaged dignity and empowerment through the capture of political power. Mayawati carried forward that legacy, achieving electoral victory in a caste-ridden society. But over the past five years, that purposefulness came unstuck. The BSP's grip on dalits remained broadly intact but the nimble footedness and flexibility necessary for a political party suffered as a consequence of her own high-handedness.

For Rahul Gandhi too, the hyper-involvement and aggressive posturing of the past month was driven by a desire to set the Congress back on track in India's largest state. The heir apparent of the Congress knew that a good showing in UP would firmly establish his political legitimacy. This understandable mission was, however, marred by impulsive politics.

First, Rahul based his intervention in UP on the belief that the Youth Congress had established a formidable network of young Indians driven by a desire to change the culture of politics. The problem was that the network Rahul sought to create had little or no relationship with the pre-existing Congress. UP saw the bizarre spectacle of an 'old' and largely dispirited Congress being out of synch with those who fancied themselves as the new inheritors. The argument that the party organisation failed to harvest the goodwill generated by Rahul is specious. The UP Congress suffered from the problem of incoherence.

Secondly, having chosen a (flawed) management model to undertake a blitzkrieg, Rahul chose to supplement it with a blend of paternalism and sycophancy. The overuse of the family in the Amethi-Rae Bareili-Sultanpur belt, the inclination to refer to himself in the third person and his inability to go beyond the lofty generalisations of 'development' ensured that his energetic campaign was seen as part of the seasonal tamasha-no different from the Amitabh Bachchan shows hosted by a beleaguered Samajwadi Party in 2007.

Rahul professed to stand for a modernity that would transcend the preoccupation with caste politics . Yet, his style was paternalistic and more befitting an inheritor than a reformer. The Congress' disappointing performance wasn't entirely the responsibility of Rahul but it exposed the limitations of Rahul's messaging-particularly when contrasted with the understated earthiness of Akhilesh Yadav. India has changed, but Rahul persisted with an outmoded imperial style.

Finally, Rahul failed to factor in the absurdity of Delhi dictating the political agenda of an increasingly federal-minded India. He didn't gauge that regional parties can't be beaten by a squad of paratroopers. After 1991, UP is becoming more self-contained. Rahul tried to reverse this localism with a contrived national thrust which, alas, was a euphemism for his own political career.

The UP election should, ideally, add to the learning curve of all the four parties. Unfortunately, despite the routine assurances of 'introspection' that come with setbacks, the inclination to disregard history has been unfailing.


Sunday Times of India, March 11, 2012

BJP has failed to mirror society

By Swapan Dasgupta

The results of the five Assembly elections have proved to be a major disappointment to the Congress. Far from bolstering the UPA Government at the Centre, the verdict of the electorate has eroded the already fragile self-confidence of the party, more so since Uttar Pradesh delivered a crushing blow to Rahul Gandhi’s aggressive bid to legitimise his family inheritance.

Yet, the Congress isn’t the only party that should be worried by the message of the electorate. The BJP which had banked on a discernible recovery in Uttar Pradesh has reason to be worried about the possibility of the Assembly results being replicated in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. If a poor Congress performance is coupled by the BJP’s political stagnation, it would put paid to the NDA hopes of staging an unequivocal come back at the Centre.

In a cogent analysis of the UP results, BJP leader Arun Jaitley has suggested that his party lost owing to the perception that it was not in a position to emerge as the principal opponent to Mayawati. The party, he believed, was squeezed into a poor third place owing to a sufficient mass of anti-Mayawati votes gravitating to the Samajwadi Party, the principal opposition to the BSP.

Jaitley has very correctly described the phenomenon whereby the BJP won just 47 seats instead of the 75 or seats the leadership expected. Yet, his analysis doesn’t touch on the more awkward question: why, despite being 10 years in opposition, has the party failed to be perceived as a credible alternative?

This question has to be asked in conjunction with the results of Uttarakhand and Punjab. In Uttarakhand, despite a valiant rearguard battle led by Major-General B.C. Khanduri, the BJP lost a government. And in Punjab, the party’s vote share fell sharply in the urban areas. If the BJP still managed to hold on to a dozen or so seats, it was thanks to Congress rebels and some deft election management. Indeed, apart from Goa where Manohar Parikkar steered the party into its best performance ever, the only reason the BJP has to celebrate is a negative one: that the Congress did worse.

For the BJP, there are certain broad lessons from last week’s results. The first, and most obvious one, is that the party has suffered on account of its indulgence of ministers whose integrity was perceived to be suspect. Uttarakhand is a glaring example of the rot that is allowed to seep into the BJP. In this season of introspection, the party must ask itself why it allowed itself to be bulldozed into removing Khanduri in 2009 and why it did not act earlier against a disreputable administration headed by Ramesh Pokhryal. It is one thing to say that the BJP believes in collective leadership. But if the obstinacy of two or three top leaders contributes to self-destruction, does it not suggest the overall failure of leadership systems?

One of the great tests of the BJP in the coming days will lie in the appointment of its ministers in Punjab and its opposition leaders in Uttarakhand and UP. If the party persists with tired and often discredited faces, it will send out the unmistakable message that it is contemptuous of the electorate’s verdict. As the Goa results demonstrated and as Khanduri’s brave rearguard action suggested, it pays to have a leaders with impeccable records of integrity. The BJP should realise that its voters have more exacting standards for the lotus than it does for the hand.

The second lesson is linked to the shrinking social base of the party. One of the main reasons—apart from the mobilisation around Ayodhya—the BJP was able to make a big headway in the 1990s was its ability to go beyond its traditional upper caste base. In UP, the incremental support from OBCs has been eroding since Kalyan Singh’s departure. Today, the BJP is getting some OBC votes but not in sufficient numbers to complement its urban base. The decision to induct Uma Bharti to try and retrieve lost ground was a step in the right direction. However, her acceptance in the party was so incredibly grudging that her possible impact was minimised. Unless the BJP can consciously get over its savarna bias—as has happened in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat—and present a more equitable face, its stagnation is bound to persist.

Indeed, one of the features of the BJP today is its inability to be a mirror image of society. It is unlikely that the party is going to secure Muslim and Christian voters in a hurry. But it has not taken enough pro-active steps to ensure that the party represents the Hindus in totality. This is both a political and social feeling.

The lack of inclusiveness extends to the insufficient appeal among the young. No one is asking for the BJP to become a babalog party like the Congress. But it needs to discard its fuddy-duddy face and give greater opportunities to those who are yet to touch 50, particularly women who don’t fit the stereotype of the traditional Bharatiya nari. The Congress sends its veterans to the Raj Bhavans. The BJP doesn’t have that luxury. But at the risk of being cruel, it has to find a way to ease tired veterans from its decision-making structures. The party looked young, energetic and bubbling with ideas in the 1990s. It now has a jaded look. 


Sunday Pioneer, March 11, 2012

The royal battle of political dynasties

By Swapan Dasgupta

There were many battles that were simultaneously being fought in Uttar Pradesh over the past three months. The first was in the constituencies between candidates for the privilege of becoming a Member of the Legislative Assembly. The second was between political parties over the right to form a government in Lucknow. The third was a battle between different claimants to the post of Chief Minister. Yet, for a large part of the outside world, it was the fourth contest that caught the imagination: an unstated battle royal between the heirs of two political dynasties.

Last Tuesday, as the Samajwadi Party coasted to a convincing victory, recording the best performance by any political party since 1985, the unanimous verdict was that Akhilesh Yadav, son of Mulayam Singh Yadav, had easily trounced the heir apparent of the Nehru-Gandhi family. An impressionable (and, often, craftily gullible) media that had been detecting pro-Congress undercurrents in chai shop talks were quick to change their tune and proclaim Akhilesh as the more authentic representative of the emerging young India.

Rahul Gandhi, whose energetic campaigning had mesmerised the babalogs, and who was confidently predicted to secure at least 100 seats for the Congress was, for the moment, discarded in embarrassment. Sundry anchors and pundits who till the other day were ready to proclaim that India needed a break from the wooden style of the good Manmohan Singh suddenly discovered a hidden streak of insolence when interrogating dejected Congress stalwarts who, in turn, tried to balance political realities with craven dynastic loyalty. The Establishment of India revelled as the first family squirmed with embarrassment at the near-zero returns from a high investment scheme.

It is fair to say that had the shoe been on the other foot, the reactions would have been more subdued. Metropolitan arrogance would have compared a Rahul triumph over Akhilesh as natural and almost pre-ordained—akin to, say, India beating Zimbabwe in cricket. Falling back on defensive condescension, the suave Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh told CNN-IBN in all seriousness that Rahul, having a ‘national perspective’ could not be put on par with a ‘regional leader’ such as Akhilesh. Each had their place and when it came to the nation in its entirety, the likes of Akhilesh and for that matter Naveen Patnaik were to be found wanting. The implication was obvious: Rahul must rule India and the Yadav, Badal and Patnaik families should confine themselves to the states.

The point is not that Digvijay Singh was falling back on a disingenuous argument to firewall Rahul. It is my feeling that he was being deadly serious in his assertion. He didn’t mean to be offensive. He sincerely believed that the governance of the nation and the fortunes of the Gandhi were inextricably linked. One couldn’t do without the other.

What was put to test in UP in the just-concluded Assembly election was two very different mentalities. The Congress and, for that matter, a section of the BJP, are puzzled by the growing clout of the regional parties. They are unable to comprehend why an UP which, till just 15 years ago, imagined itself to be synonymous with the nation has now voluntarily chosen to be relegated to the level of the states.

To believe that India’s largest state has suddenly become narrow minded is to be unmindful of a very different phenomenon: the enlargement of the idea of India. The past three decades has witnessed a greater integration of India. There is now far greater mobility of population than at any point in India’s history; the insularity of village India has been shattered by better communications, access to the media and the emergence of a national market. Delhi may still be a long way from the district headquarters but it is less distant than it was 30 years ago. From Bollywood and cricket to terrorism, there are many more national concerns to the 25-year-old youth than confronted his grandfather.

By this logic India should also start behaving politically more like one nation and less like 25 different nations under one flag and Constitution. Yet, and this is the paradox, the political behaviour of the nation was far more composite when Indira Gandhi was at the helm than when Rahul Gandhi is trying to find his feet. Today’s political India speaks in a multitude of voices.

The explanation for this phenomenon is best left to the scholars. In understanding politics, however, what is important is the recognition that the one-size-fits-all approach is no longer inapplicable. The mega welfare schemes promoted by Sonia Gandhi and the do-gooder National Advisory Council have floundered precisely because they can’t fit Punjab, Bihar, Gujarat and UP simultaneously. Yet, this is precisely the point that is insufficiently appreciated by the Planning Commission, the pan-Indian cosmopolitan elite and, most important, the Congress’ first family refuse to comprehend. They are still stuck in the centralised legacy of the Nehru order. More to the point, this political pan-Indianism is convenient and an alternative to activism that is rooted in the regional ethos.

There was a time when federalism was resisted because it was believed to compromise the ‘unity and integrity’ of India. Today, an India more secure in its nationhood seeks governance that is less remote and more accountable. These impulses have implicitly challenged the assumptions that necessitated a national political dynasty. Rahul may be a victim of the impersonal forces of history.


Deccan Chronicle/ Asian Age, March 8, 2012

Outrage will not influence UP polls

By Swapan Dasgupta

Having been at the receiving end of metropolitan derision for more than a year, the Congress has reason to believe the tide is finally turning. If its Christmas celebrations were not entirely joyous thanks to the “fleedom at midnight” saga in the Rajya Sabha over the Lokpal Bill, 2012 has begun on a happier note for three reasons.

First, the party’s bush telegraph has successfully disseminated the impression that it is on a spectacular comeback trail in Uttar Pradesh. Whereas it was earlier expected to come fourth in a four-cornered contest in India’s largest State, optimists now reckon it is in second place after Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and much ahead of both Mayawati and the BJP. To what extent this perception is real or simply based on irrational exuberance is something which will be known on March 4. But there is no doubt there is an extra bounce in the step of the average Congress activist.

Second, the tension between the Congress and Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal hasn’t renewed speculation about an imminent collapse of the UPA Government at the Centre. Instead, it has been an occasion to demonstrate that India’s oldest political party remains wonderfully nimble-footed for its age. There is talk that there will be a swap in coalition partners, with the Samajwadi Party replacing the Trinamool Congress. If the grapevine is to be believed, it has already been decided that the next Railway Minister will be either Mulayam Singh Yadav or his son Akhilesh. The associated presumption is that there will be a SP Government in UP propped up by the Congress, either in coalition or through outside support.

Finally, Congress publicists, aided by an obliging media desperate to prove its even-handedness, have made much of the BJP’s hypocrisy in crusading against corruption and simultaneously embracing the tainted BSP discard Babu Singh Kushwaha in UP. Ideally the BJP should either have spurned Kushwaha or been brazen about his induction. Instead, it got the worst of both worlds by first welcoming Kushwaha and then allowing internal democracy to become public democracy. What was essentially a one-day headline has dominated the news space for three days because Kushwaha became the fig leaf for different factions of the party to play out their rivalries over the distribution of tickets. True, there were individuals who were guided by ethical imperatives. In the main, however, the respective positions on Kushwaha were guided by factional (and, by implication, caste) considerations. The sub-text of the turbulence was a tug-of-war between the upper caste and OBC lobbies of the party.

For the Congress, the Kushwaha affair has been a godsend. It has allowed it to establish the principle of moral equivalence. This is important for the Congress. As a practitioner of the most cynical form of statecraft, the Congress has tended to be expedient and flexible on the issue of corruption. The BJP, unfortunately for it, is a party whose ethos is governed by middle-class values. Thanks to its RSS pedigree, it has traditionally cherished uprightness more fanatically than the party which claims descent from Mahatma Gandhi. In electoral terms this implies that the Congress can live with a YS Rajasekhara Reddy more easily than the BJP can digest a BS Yeddyurappa. For the Congress, doling out patronage is a part of normal politics; for the BJP, innocence is still cherished. The Congress will play the caste game with vigour and yet pretend it is above casteism; the BJP will play the caste game surreptitiously because it always has one eye on a homogenised nationalism.

There is another big difference. Last month, the Congress effortlessly accommodated Ajit Singh and his Rashtriya Lok Dal in the UPA. This was despite the fact that the RLD contested the 2009 general election as an ally of the BJP. There were Congressmen who didn’t like the arrangement. But they kept quiet because the party operates on the principle that the High Command — a euphemism for the first family — has the last word. The BJP, on the other hand, is relatively more democratic. The alacrity with which Yogi Adityanath, Maneka Gandhi and others expressed their opposition to Kushwaha’s entry is in sharp contrast to the silence which greets controversial decisions by the Congress High Command.

The question is: Which of the two approaches is preferable? Middle-class opinion is remarkably schizoid on this point. On the one hand, the lack of internal democracy inside the Congress is lamented. Simultaneously, the middle-class (which is also reflected in the media) shows a great deal of impatience with inner-party strife which is equated with indiscipline. An argumentative democracy is celebrated with the same enthusiasm as regimented democracy.

It is quite apparent that this middle-class sentiment doesn’t always percolate down to the grassroots. Mayawati’s grand birthday celebrations and her majestic monuments to Kanshi Ram are mocked by the middle-classes. Yet, it is quite apparent that Mayawati’s ostentatious flamboyance carries a large measure of approval of ordinary, poor Dalits who view her wealth and success as symbols of community pride. Flashiness, in other words, isn’t universally loathed. Its perceptions are socially determined. This may explain why politicians tend to be far more accommodative towards cutting corners than do the supporters of Anna Hazare. This may also explain why the outburst of moral indignation against the BJP on Kushwaha may not be a determining factor in the UP election.

Sunday Pioneer, January 8, 2012